Reading Archives (2013)
What to Remember When Waking
David Whyte
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening...
Honoring the Gill Inside You
Mark Nepo
A simple fish nosing its way along the bottom is in itself a profound teacher, and like the deepest teachers, it doesn't even know it is teaching. Yet in its tiny, efficient gill lives the mystery...
Beauty Harmonizes Law and Liberty
Rabindranath Tagore
A great poem, when analyzed, is a set of detached sounds. The reader who finds out the meaning, which is the inner medium that connects these outer sounds, discovers a perfect law all through, which i...
Pablo Neruda's Greatest Lesson from Childhood
Lewis Hyde
Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, u...
Indulge an Attachment
Roger Walsh
One of my meditation teachers was a man who had devoted many years to spiritual practice. He had studied many spiritual texts, lived in monasteries under austere conditions, and done long medita...
Art And The Practice Of Being Yourself
Stanley Kunitz
There isn’t only one kind of artist in the world, one way of becoming an artist. There is, above all, a need to articulate your own source of being so you will recognize the source and know who ...
Is It Really Worth It?
Patty De Llosa
It’s been difficult to accept that I’m often a battleground for several sides of myself, which seem to act in opposition to one another. Is there any solution to feeling so divided? Krishn...
Why Do We Shout In Anger?
Unknown
A saint who was once visiting a river to take a bath found a group of family members on the banks, shouting in anger at each other. He turned to his disciples, smiled and asked. 'Why do people ...
Reaching Underneath Our Protective Shell
Pema Chodron
There's a slogan in the Mahayana teachings that says, "Drive all blames onto oneself." The essence of this slogan is, "When it hurts so bad, it's because I am hanging on so tigh...
Do we Use Thought, or Does Thought Use us?
Dada
Have you ever looked meditatively into the cause-and-effect of thought, into the birth and death of thought, the cycle that creates fear and conflict with resultant sorrow? Every expression of thou...
A Guide To Life's Turning Points
Brian Browne-Walker
Progress is made in steps, not in leaps. Move only as far as the opening allows. Remain neutral and tolerant of adversity. When in doubt, remain still. By accepting things as they are and not makin...
To Have Without Holding
Marge Piercy
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the ...
Liberation is Not a Spectator Sport
Adyashanti
The Way of Liberation is a stripped-down, practical guide to spiritual liberation, sometimes called awakening, enlightenment, self-realization, or simply seeing what is absolutely True. It is impossib...
The Committee of the Mind
Thanissaro Bhikku
There are many different ideas of “you” in your mind, each with its own agenda. Each of these “you's” is a member of the committee of the mind. This is why the mind is less...
To Separate and Unify
Mark Nepo
The destruction or healing of the world hinges on which way this thought unfolds. Whether we pull things apart or put things together makes all the difference. Indeed, human history has unfolded with ...
Meditate Like Christ
Krishna Das
One day a Canadian man arrived for his first visit with Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji). He didn't know much about Maharaj-ji but had heard about him. Maharaj-ji didn't give lectures or fo...
Dropping That Drug
Anthony de Mello
If we really dropped illusions for what others can give us or deprive us of, we would become alert. The consequence of not doing this is terrifying and inescapable -- we lose our capacity to love. If ...
Honor the Seed
Jim Ewing
Honor the seed. The words seem so simple. This is knowledge that was passed down to me from my father. Yet, today, those simple words — and sentiments — are so forgotten. My father, a b...
Kindness: The First Gift
John O'Donohue
There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness i...
True Meditation Has No Direction
Adyashanti
True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascinat...